Highway Prayer: A Tribute Adam Carroll Album Release Party

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Highway Prayer: A Tribute to Adam Carroll, due October 28 on Austin-based Eight 30 Records, celebrates a true songwriter's songwriter, a Texas tunesmith who has inspired both younger and older artists for nearly two decades. Carroll simply captures entire lifetimes among stilled snapshots like few other songwriters (“Screen Door,” “Girl with the Dirty Hair”). “I try to find moments that are sublime,” Carroll explains. “They just last a little bit and then you're back to your regular life and strife, but there are just these perfect little moments.” Evidence: “Black Flag Blues,” “Red Bandana Blues,” “South of Town,” “Smoky Mountain Taxi” and dozens more.

Carroll sketches characters with a novelist’s eye (“Errol's Song”) and a poet's elegance (“Hi-Fi Love”) as his vivid vignettes frequently turn personal into universal within seconds (“Highway Prayer”). Consider “Rain.” “I'm feeling like a bird dragging through the storm/Feeling like a scarecrow standing in the corn,” the down and defeated narrator declares. “Sometimes you can't get through; sometimes it just takes two/Sometimes two adds up to nothing.” Such sideways glances define his literate landscapes. “Long compared to the likes of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt,” the Austin Chronicle once raved, “Adam Carroll proves he's beyond compare.”

Admittedly, eyebrows raised throughout the Lone Star state and beyond as news spread about this tribute record. After all, the Central Texas-based songwriter has notched only forty-two trips around the sun, a young man by any measure. No matter. Carroll's deeply observant stories simply deserve wider attention beyond his reverent peers. “Adam's a songwriter's songwriter, a unique voice who's important to a lot of songwriters,” longtime fan Hayes Carll says. “A lot of people are influenced by him. That's the measure of if you deserve a tribute record: Are there people you have influenced enough who will come and do it? That's undoubtedly so with Adam.”

Clearly. Scan the roster who jumped the notion was mentioned: Slaid Cleaves. Terri Hendrix. James McMurtry. Verlon Thompson. Walt Wilkins. Only songs with the most depth and weight turn those heads. “Adam has so many great songs,” Cleaves says. “There are only a couple of writers who consistently catch my ear and remind me of the subtle joy that great songs can bring. It's artisanal songwriting. Never gonna be sold at Walmart, but it'll remind the fortunate few that great songwriting can connect you to your neighbors, your fellow humans, even your own jaded heart.”